In existing reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer (ROADM) based optical nodes, a set of add ports and a set of drop ports are dedicated to a given output network node interface. Attached to a given add/drop port is an optical transponder. The optical transponder provides an ability to convert a “white light” non-colored optical signal to a colored optical signal (and vice versa). The ROADM then provides an ability to multiplex multiple colored optical signals into a single multi-wavelength dense wavelength division multiplexed (DWDM) optical signal. When dedicating a given transponder to a given network node interface, there can be corresponding inflexibility at the network level in the presence of network failures (e.g., fiber failures and node failures). This can occur in so called “mesh networks.”